


Superbia

by Mojave Dragonfly (Dragonfly)



Series: Seven Deadly Sins [4]
Category: Blood Ties
Genre: Episode Related, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2007-12-13
Updated: 2007-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-23 07:41:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/247853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonfly/pseuds/Mojave%20Dragonfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the episode, "Norman," Vicki and Henry try to destroy the ritual items Norman used to summon Astaroth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Superbia

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  Disclaimer: Blood Ties belongs to its creator, Tanya Huff, and to Lifetime and a production company or two. It does not belong to me.
> 
> Author's Notes: This story begins during/after the episode "Norman," and so contains spoilers for that episode. It is not consistent with the events in my story, Luxuria.  
> 

_Superbia -- Pride, one of the seven deadly sins_

"Not a real blonde," Vicki said, part of her pleased that she retained enough self-possession to quip with a demon, and also heady from the startling discovery that she could affect it with her blows. She was determined to get through this Norman-ish creature to Henry, who lay bleeding on the floor. She'd seen "Norman" throw Henry to the floor just as she entered the apartment, and, though he'd spoken once, Henry hadn't gotten up again.

She set her stance and readied her baton for another round. Something had injured her mouth; she tasted the warm tang of blood. "Norman" turned toward her, red-rimmed yellow eyes appraising, and Vicki clamped down on her fear, bracing.

The shape of the man vanished, transformed into bird-like flapping creatures with an appalling stench. Vicki ducked and swung, but the creatures swooped out the open door.

Vicki dropped her baton and rushed to Henry.

"Henry, are you okay?" She dropped to his side, forcing herself to look at the gashes in his chest. Bad, painfully bad, but not as bad as when Astaroth's first servant had fought Henry and left him for dead.

"I'll live," Henry said, his voice rasping with pain. "You?"

She looked at his face, his fangs showing and eyes gone dark, a monster's face, one might think, but to Vicki it was familiar, even comforting. The part of Henry he dared to show her. This really was Henry. That other Henry was—oh, God, was that Norman?

"That depends," she found herself saying, inane though it sounded. "Were you just at my apartment kissing me?"

"If I was, you'd remember it," Henry gasped, as if he also thought this was a logical conversation for them to have. His right hand gripped a dagger.

"Oh, blech," she exclaimed. "I'm really going to need some mouthwash."

Vicki's thoughts spun. _Henry was hurt._ It wasn't Henry before; Norman could shape-shift. He didn't get the dagger; Henry still held it. _Henry was hurt._ Who else had Norman posed as? Did he have the grimoire? _Henry was hurt._

Henry put his hand up to her face. "You're bleeding," he said.

Vicki focused on him. The blood welled even faster from her lip; she had trouble containing it in her mouth and it flowed messily down her chin. Henry's pupil-less gaze fastened on the sight, but Vicki didn't see hunger in his look, only concern and a pained wistfulness, as if Henry regarded a treasure he couldn't hope to possess.

Well, that was ridiculous. It was doing her no good, and she really needed to wipe away the memory of kissing "Norman." "I'd hate to waste it," she said, and leaned down into his kiss.

As their lips touched, Henry surged into her. Not just physically; Vicki was abruptly flooded by _Henry._ By the force of his personality, his worry and fear, his pain and need and a hint of guilt. The kiss was more intense than any she'd ever known, and with no warning.

Henry broke the kiss. "Stop," he said.

 _Stop?_

He pushed her away, to arm's length.

Vicki panted, her vision clearing as much as it ever did, her heart pounding. She blinked at Henry in incomprehension. He still lay on the floor, recovering. Why had he stopped them? He needed more, she was sure. She needed more; that was certain.

"We've a demon to stop," he said, his chest still heaving.

 _Yes, but, stop?_ Her physical responses, usually well under her control, continued untamed. She wanted his kiss, his feel, she wanted to press all of her against all of him. Why would he stop?

She struggled to remember the last time she'd spoken to the real Henry. They'd been on the street outside Maurice's. She'd been frightened and frosty to him.

 _All right, all right._ This was his call, after all, whatever was behind it. "At least he didn't get the knife," she said, sounding almost normal.

Henry's face remained in vampire shape, a sign, Vicki guessed, that he needed more blood. "This isn't over," he said, still in pained tones. "He knows where it is, now. He'll come back for it."

Vicki took a firm hold of her whirling thoughts. The demon's still out there. What was her first priority, if not to heal Henry? _It's Norman, and he can shape-shift. Think._

Coreen.

"Oh God, I've got to warn Coreen," she said, whipping out her phone.

###

"Wear something nice," Norman added, just before Vicki heard the click of a broken connection.

Henry levered himself up with an elbow, still weak, but his face had returned to "normal." He got slowly to his feet.

"He's got Coreen at his old place," she said, fighting despair. "He wants us to bring him the dagger."

"And you," Henry said grimly.

 _I don't want to be demon food,_ Vicki thought. _Why me? It's not fair. Coreen even yelled at me to stay away._ "Don't even think about suggesting I leave her there," she growled at Henry.

"I wouldn't," he said. "You wouldn't anyway." If he was hurt by her accusation, he didn't show it. His brow creased with worry, he limped toward his own phone and picked it up.

Vicki felt deeply ashamed. He wasn't the one who had thought of abandoning Coreen. She had lectured him once about remembering what he could be, and here he was assuming she was free of selfish fear. Well, by God, she was going to make him right. If it killed her.

"Who are you calling?"

"Betty," Henry said. "You were right. I should have warned her."

Vicki felt sick. "Norman" had acted like the dagger was all he needed, which meant he had the grimoire. She moved to Henry's side, sharing his horror that he might have gotten a dear friend killed. Again.

She put a hand on his arm, her own flesh still protesting the separation from him. He leaned into her, accepting her comfort as they waited. Her pulse quickened just from touching him. Which he probably knew.

She heard a tinny voice on the phone, and Henry straightened. "Betty, you're all right?"

Henry gave her a relieved look. "The grimoire, the one from the summoning. Do you still have it?" Henry wavered on his feet, wincing. His wounds showed red through his ripped shirt, though they had stopped bleeding. "You did? I did? No. No, Betty, it's all right. Don't do anything. I'll explain later. Thank you. Thank you."

He hung up the phone and turned to Vicki. His chest heaved with pain and emotion as he spoke. "She gave it to him, but he didn’t hurt her. She thought it was me."

To Henry this was good news, Vicki knew, but she would so have preferred to hear that the grimoire was safe. _Too much to hope for,_ she told herself. _Be glad Segara's alive._

Henry looked pale and stressed, about like Vicki felt. "You need more," Vicki said. Besides her concern for him, she admitted a selfish fear. She couldn't do this without him—not and have any hope of living.

He raised his head and regarded her tenderly. "Your cut has healed," he said. Vicki felt the inside of her lip with her tongue. It was true; there was no trace of the split. How could it have healed so fast, and how did he know?

"We don't have much time," he said. "I'll be all right. I've got an idea."

He turned back to the phone. She listened as he called a priest and arranged to have the man meet them near Norman's old apartment. His voice strengthened as he spoke to the man.

"With the dagger freshly blessed, we may be able to sabotage the ritual," Henry told her, after hanging up the phone.

Vicki nodded, forcing herself to believe there could be hope. Maybe it could work. If the forces of evil were real, shouldn't the forces for good be real, too?  


###

Adrenaline still surged in her as she and Henry left Norman's old apartment. She also trembled with relief and joy she tried to hide. They won! They were all still alive! Could she dare to count on this streak of luck continuing?

Henry held his car door for her as Vicki got in, keeping her right hand inside a coat pocket against her stomach. Henry placed the three magic items in the back seat and then got in the driver's seat. He sat unmoving for a moment.

He gave Vicki a tired smile. "How's your hand?"

"Hurts," she admitted, "but I should get a matching scar out of it."

"What do you mean?"

"Apparently palms scar easily. My other hand has a scar where I sliced it—before."

Henry frowned. "Delphine," he said. Vicki nodded. "May I see it?" he asked.

"Which one?"

"Where Norman cut you," he said, indicating her right hand. Vicki held it out, reluctantly, since the bleeding hadn't slowed and she didn't want to get blood on his upholstery. It had been soaking into her coat.

Henry cupped her hand from beneath, so any overflow fell on his own, larger hand. "That's bad," he said. "You should have gone with Celucci and Coreen."

"No way," she said. "I just need some kind of bandage, and then . . ." She trailed off. The lights in the parking structure were just bright enough to show her Henry's eyes gone black. She inhaled, then let it out. She guessed he was still hurting.

"May I?" he asked. "It will heal faster, and . . ."

"The dagger," she said. "You're not afraid it polluted me or something?"

"No," Henry said hoarsely. His need quickened her pulse. He held her hand steadily, almost eerily unmoving, neither releasing her nor tightening. Vicki sensed that stillness as rigid control. Blood coated her hand and part of his, and her faster heartbeat intensified the pain of the cut. The thought of a soft mouth, soothing, cooling—he wouldn't need to bite, surely. She shifted in her seat and swallowed.

Henry gazed at her with whiteless eyes, waiting, poised. He would release her if she said no, she was confident of that. His self-control was a third presence in the car. She wasn't at all sure her own control would withstand another kiss as powerful as the one they'd shared in his apartment. _At least nothing else is likely to happen here in the car,_ she thought wryly. _And this isn't a kiss._

"Sure," she said shakily. "It's win–win, right?"

Her last word ended with a gasp as Henry moved to her hand faster than she could see.

###

They returned to Henry's condominium to assess the damage and plan. Vicki found a suitable bandage in Henry's bathroom for her hand. It barely needed one, now. When she emerged, she found Henry straightening the room up from the fight with "Norman," a tarp covering the pool of his blood. He moved easily, without any apparent pain, and had changed out of his damaged shirt. The dagger, the chalice and the grimoire sat on his coffee table.

"We should clean the blood up," she said, nodding toward the tarp.

"The material is specially treated," Henry said. "It will absorb most of the blood into the cloth and keep the remainder uncongealed."

Vicki took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. She found herself thinking of myriads of bloody crime scenes from her time on the force. "You—have specially treated tarps for dealing with blood." He hoped he hadn't patented the "special treatment."

Henry gave her a fleeting smile and turned to regard the hole in the drywall of his living room. Vicki stood beside him. "Why did you hide it," she asked, "instead of destroying it?"

Henry's lips tightened. "It should have been all right. The items weren't together, and one of them was under my own protection."

"Not during the day," Vicki said.

Henry gave her an irritated glance. "It wasn't during the day that it was taken," he said.

Vicki found herself wanting to ask about "Norman's" visit. She, at least, had known something was wrong when she'd kissed the not-Henry. She wondered how long had it taken for Henry to realize it wasn't her. But they'd agreed to pretend the whole embarrassing situation hadn't happened. They weren't going to repeat the kissing thing, and she wasn't sorry. Really, she wasn't.

Henry turned to the table with the items. "What I didn't do isn't the concern now. We need to find a way to destroy them."

"You don't know how?"

"Why would I know that?"

"You said you were going to destroy them the last time. You mean, you didn't even know how?"

The look he gave her then might have given an assault force pause. It only made Vicki more mad. Gone was the bond they'd shared over victory and blood.

"I spoke to Maurice," Henry said. "He agreed that it's almost impossible to destroy dark magic without being tainted by it. I wouldn't take that risk and neither would he."

"A fact you didn't think to share with me."

"What difference would it have made? Maurice and I made them as secure as we could, with as few people as possible knowing where they were. Would that not have been good enough for you, Your Highness?"

 _My Highness?_ Vicki's blood boiled. He was a fine one to—she clamped her teeth tightly together to hold her angry words in. Much as she hated the situation, it hadn't changed; she still needed his help.

"I expect," she said in a low, controlled voice, "to be included in decisions which affect me."

"Then let's decide what to do with them," he said, gesturing at the coffee table.

Vicki flopped into a chair and let a few seconds pass while she got her temper under control. "What else did Maurice say?" she asked. "He said it was _almost_ impossible to not be tainted?"

Henry considered, his head tipped slightly, his gaze still on the objects. "You have to consider each object individually. Learn what it's made of, who made it and why, and what its role was in the summoning ritual. Then you have to understand how the items work together. They stand for head, hand and heart, or physical, intellectual and spiritual. Once you've figured all that out, you destroy them in whatever way is appropriately symbolic, but not a magic ritual."

Vicki raised her eyebrows, absorbing all this. "How are we supposed to learn all that?"

Henry also sat. "I don't know. We start with research. Maurice would have been a great help, but even he thought it would be difficult."

Vicki sat forward and regarded the chalice, dagger and grimoire. "Head, hand and heart, huh?

Henry nodded. "Some form of that trinity."

Vicki thought. "Well, head, that's the intellectual. That would be the grimoire. It's a book."

"It's reasonable. The dagger would be the physical, or the hand."

"That leaves the goblet to be spiritual. Does that make any sense?"

"The holy grail was a goblet and it was the ultimate spiritual goal. It held the blood of Christ, which passed through His heart, the seat of love and compassion. I'd say the chalice is definitely the spiritual."

Vicki closed her eyes for a moment. "Are you going to tell me the holy grail was real?"

Henry shrugged. "I keep an open mind. But I was talking about the legend." He shook his head. "But, Vicki, Astaroth could have shifted the items' roles away from the obvious to make it that much harder to destroy them."

Vicki frowned. "Could he do that? If something is a symbol of something, you can't just make it a different symbol by saying it is, can you? You can't take a flag that's a symbol of Canada and say today we're using it to stand for the U.S. It would lose any meaning."

"You could be right." Henry stood. "Let's go to Maurice's. Maybe we can learn some of what he knew."

"His shop? That's still a crime scene."

Henry took out his coat and gave her a look as he put it on. Vicki stood and shrugged back into her own jacket. "Excuse me. Of course, what difference does that make? I must be tired."

She gathered up the ritual items as Henry held his apartment door open for her. "These should stay with us," she said. Henry frowned, but didn't disagree. As she went through the door she added, "Let's find somewhere on the way to get me a coffee."

* * *

  


Nursing her coffee as they drove, Vicki began to feel more alive. Her body cried out for sleep, but keeping vampire hours meant she had to deny it sleep even more than the usual. The ritual items were piled ignominiously by her feet, the grimoire leaning against her ankle.

"So, if we're supposed to study the history of each item," she said "it sounds like Dr. Segara has already done some of the work for us, with the grimoire."

Henry nodded. "She's identified the author. Aristide Torchia. He was a black magician in the seventeenth century. Like most grimoire authors he collected spells, rituals, potion recipes, that sort of thing. His grimoire shows a particular interest in communing with Hell."

"I thought that's what they all did." Vicki sighed. "You said we're supposed to understand the context in which the thing was made. Does she know much else about him?"

"Actually, yes. I gave Betty the grimoire to study because I knew it would fascinate her and I trusted her to take proper care of it." He gave Vicki a guilty glance. "She's done it before."

Vicki stayed silent.

"I didn't realize her research might give us what we needed to safely destroy it, but maybe it has. The reason for Torchia's early interest in the black arts is obscure, but after the Inquisition executed his brother, he embraced black magic as a way to get back at the Church. At his own trial he was accused of causing the peculiar deaths of a number of his brother's Inquisitors."

Light rain began to fall, dappling the windshield. Henry put on the windshield wipers.

The rain eliminated the outside world for Vicki. She existed within the bubble of the car's interior, in a bubble with Henry. Henry's casual talk of the Inquisition added to her sense of unreality. He put no special inflection on the word, despite its horrific reality in his own life. Vicki looked at him and forced herself to focus.

"What happened to him?"

"Burned at the stake."

"I should have guessed."

At Maurice's shop, a fire was burning in the fireplace at the back. Vicki frowned at it. "Who lit a fire?" she asked. "Is someone here?" She picked up a weathered leather pack with shoulder straps and opened it.

"No," Henry replied with confidence. "Shouldn't we be wearing gloves?"

"They've already dusted," Vicki said. "Besides, it's Mike's case and he knows perfectly well what killed Maurice."

"I did," Henry said. "I got Maurice killed."

There was little comfort Vicki could give to that. It wasn't exactly true; no one could have predicted how things would turn out, but Henry knew that as well as she did. Henry had involved Maurice; she wouldn't be able to argue with him about that. She'd known enough cops whose partners had been killed to recognize the survivor's guilt. There wasn't much to do about the grief except try to channel it into something useful.

"Would Maurice object to us using his things to try to solve this?"

Henry managed half a smile. "Under the circumstances, I doubt it."

Vicki held out the empty pack to him. "Then here, let's put the items in this."

Henry placed them inside the pack, not looking at her, then moved to investigate a metal-banded chest that looked like it should hold pirate treasure.

"Someone was here, though," Vicki said, eyeing the fire again.

Henry's chest yielded to a key he'd found nearby and the lid creaked as he opened it. Since he made no comment on the contents, Vicki turned to the bookshelves.

"What are we looking for?" she asked.

"Isn't that my line?" Henry gave her a fleeting grin. "Anything to do with the items or things like them. Anything about destroying magic. You know, clues."

Vicki gave him a you-think-you're-funny-don't-you look and scanned the book titles.

For the next few hours they combed Maurice's for, you know, clues. The rain tapped a staccato rhythm against the store's plate glass. The night grew late. Or early. The logs in the fireplace smoldered on, their warmth keeping the shop from feeling damp.

Vicki pulled out a book called Witchcraft in the Middle Ages. "So if Torchia really was a magician, I guess the Inquisition sometimes got it right. I don't mean with you," she added hastily. "But what about all these people who were burned as witches? I suppose some of them really were, then."

Henry replaced a vial of potion into its cabinet and glanced at the book in her hand. "They got it right with me," he said. "I am a vampire."

"But you're not—evil."

"Tell that to Celucci."

"I do. Often."

Henry joined her at the bookcase and reached up for another book. "Most of the innocents killed during the witch hunts were executed by secular authorities. I think the Church often got it right. I was lucky it was the Inquisition that found me out."

"Lucky?" Vicki asked, aghast. Mendoza was still fresh in her memory—his obsession that led to his obscene immortality and his twisted insistence that Henry deserved no mercy.

Henry looked up from his book into her eyes. "They had an obligation to try to save my soul. That bought me time. Terrified villagers would have tied me to my bed and torched me in it."

"You sound like you're defending them."

Henry's frank gaze veiled and he looked back at his book. " _Fidei Defensor,_ " he said softly. "Before my father perverted it. It's the Church. You wouldn't understand."

"Because I'm not Catholic? Henry you don't really believe any of that still matters."

Henry replaced his book on the shelf. "A priest's blessing saved us tonight, Vicki. Do you think a Protestant minister could have done the same?"

Vicki tried to keep her mouth from falling open. "That's ludicrous," she said without thinking.

"Is it? You believe in demons but you don't believe in God?"

"Of course I believe in God. But no one faith is the only way. If I believed that, I'd have to become Catholic for my own protection."

"I don't think that's a bad idea," Henry said calmly.

Confused, Vicki rolled her eyes back at the bookcase. She hated being confused. Her gaze fell on a book title and she looked again. "Wait, what did you say? The Latin."

" _Fidei Defensor._ It means 'Defender of the Faith.'"

"There, on the top shelf. There's a book with that name."

"There is?" Henry said, following her gaze. "We need that book. Excuse me." Henry slid between her and the wooden rail on the narrow landing along the bottom of the bookshelves.

"I just thought it was a funny coincidence."

Henry turned back to her. "Vicki, we are on a magical quest to destroy three evil ritual items. The rules are different now. Signs, omens, coincidences, they all matter. We need that book." And with that, he leaped to the top of the bookshelf, clung there with little hand- or footholds, withdrew the book and dropped back to her side.

Vicki gasped. "I keep forgetting you can do that."

Somberly, Henry handed her the book. "Say a prayer and open to a page."

"You've got to be kidding."

"Humor me."

"A prayer? I don't—"

"Never mind. Just go ahead. Open it."

Shaking her head, Vicki opened the book. A thermal draft from the fireplace rustled the page as she looked at it. "Latin, I presume," she said and handed the book to Henry.

Henry skimmed the page and his eyebrows rose. He turned the book over to read more from the cover. "St. Thomas More," he said, a note of disbelief in his tone, and went back to reading. "It's — it's an alternate biography. Claiming More was in league with the Devil."

"Written by a Protestant, no doubt," Vicki said. Her head was beginning to hurt.

"No doubt," Henry said absently. "This page is about elements that purify."

Vicki rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Yeah? So what does it say about purifying paper?"

Henry looked up at her. "Paper?"

"Vellum. Papyrus. Whatever the grimoire is made of."

Lifting one eyebrow, Henry scanned the page. "Fire," he said.

"Do tell," Vicki said, fishing the grimoire out of the leather pack. "We're supposed to think about context and symbolism, right?"

Henry frowned. "You're thinking . . ."

"Torchia wrote the grimoire. Torchia was burned at the stake. This seems like a no-brainer. Even his name. _Torch_ ia."

Henry nodded thoughtfully. "You want to destroy it now?" He glanced at the fireplace.

"No time like the present. It's not long till dawn, right?"

"One hour three minutes," Henry said with a glance over her shoulder at the grandfather clock she heard ticking behind her.

"If we can destroy even one of these items, I'll sleep better. That's one thing Astaroth has to replace before he can try again."

"Okay," Henry said. He held out his hand. "I'll do it."

Vicki hesitated. "I thought you—"

"I'll do it."

 _All right, Your Majesty._ She gave him the grimoire and he headed for the fireplace. Vicki followed and they both stood in front of the smoldering logs.

"It may not be hot enough," Henry said.

"It's been going since before we got here. Believe me, it's hot enough," Vicki said. The thought went through her mind that it was surprising the logs hadn't burned to cinders by now, but she let the thought wander on without paying it much attention. "Do we say anything?"

"Pray." Henry looked at her. He crossed himself, murmuring, "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." Vicki joined him in the "Amen."

Henry tossed the grimoire into the fireplace.

For a moment Vicki feared she'd been wrong, and the book had squashed out the fire. The room seemed suddenly cold. Then a finger of flame wrapped around the spine of the grimoire, grasping. Another finger curled, and another. Wood, weakened by the burning, collapsed, bringing the book down with it. The cover fell open, and the fingers of flame ripped at the pages, crinkling them into blackened balls.

As Vicki watched, mesmerized, fire pierced the thick heart of the book and something combusted into a huge fireball. She stumbled backwards, Henry moving more gracefully beside her. The flames escaped the fireplace and lit fire to a tapestry and to a wooden banister.

Vicki rushed for the door, where she'd seen that Maurice kept a code-compliant fire extinguisher. Every second she spent dodging curio shelves, desks and display cabinets seemed like an eon. Henry was at the door with her, but gave the fire extinguisher in her hands an incredulous look.

A glance behind her told her why. In an unnaturally short time, the fire had engulfed the entire room. The bookcases blazed, the grandfather clock was a roman candle, and the antique carpets were lakes of flame. The furnace of heat blasted her in the face and there was nowhere to turn away. "Out," she coughed.

And they were out. Vicki didn't quite remember going through the door under her own power, but she was happy enough to be standing on the other side of the street next to Henry. The items! She checked the two of them over. Henry still held the book he'd had, and the leather pack with the items in it was still looped over her forearm. She'd dropped the fire extinguisher along the way.

Vicki drew her phone and called it in. Maurice's shop, built of century-old clay bricks, didn't burn so much as blacken and crumble, with arms of fire reaching out of any opening and lighting the night. The rain, which could have helped dampen it, stopped. Sirens howled in the distance.

"Vicki, I have to go," Henry said. "Do you want to stay?"

Vicki considered. The 911 call had come from her cell phone, which could be checked if anyone cared to, but there wasn't any help or information she could give the fire department, at this point. And she was bone-tired, with a killer headache.

"Take me home," she said. She hefted the pack. "And these babies are going under my pillow."

"No, Vicki, let me keep them. Hear me out—" he said, as Vicki started to protest. "You are practically a ritual item yourself. Astaroth needs you and them. The last thing we should do is keep you all together."

God, she hated it when he was right. The only thing worse was when Celucci was right. No, worst of all was when her mom was right.

She must be really tired to be debating who she least liked to be right. "All right. You're right." _Dammit._ "Did we do it? Destroy the grimoire?"

"I hope so. But . . ."

"But what?"

"I didn't feel anything. Nothing leaving, nothing dying. The evil could still be here in some form." He shrugged. "Or not."

 _Great._  


* * *

  
In the morning, Mike was greeted with the news that his crime scene had burned down. He took it stoically. The workday after foiling demonic attempts to invade the world always seemed a little on the mundane side to him. When the sleep deprivation and slight shock wore off, he'd get mad, he was sure. Mad at something or someone.

When Kate showed him the switchboard records of the 911 call, he at least knew who he'd be mad at, when the time came. On the plus side, he told himself, staring unseeingly at the work on his desk, though Maurice Durand's murder was unsolvable, now he'd have more justification for never being able to solve it.

###

After a day of sleep and recovery for both Vicki and Coreen, they were back at work. Coreen seemed subdued.

"You okay?" Vicki asked. "You know, on the force, if you get caught up in something traumatic like being kidnapped and helpless and nearly murdered, they give you a week off."

"To do what?" Coreen asked.

Vicki shrugged. "I don't know. Spend time with your family, re-evaluate your life, get over it. Something like that."

Coreen pursed her black-painted lips. "And how do the cops take that?"

"They usually hate it," Vicki admitted.

Coreen nodded. "Please tell me you have some work for me to do."

"All right." Vicki was just as glad to get back to work. In the intervening night, Henry had not come by, since Vicki and Coreen were taking the day off, but he had emailed her photos of the chalice and the dagger. Vicki explained the kind of research they would need on the items and gave Coreen the photos.

"I can work on the engravings on the chalice all right," Coreen said, "but if you want to know what it's made of, I'll need it in my hands. There's a metallurgy lab at the University."

"Okay, we'll talk about it. Henry's got the things and I don't know what he's done with them."

"Did you see there's a message from Mike? He'd like you and Henry to come to the morgue tonight."

Her _and Henry?_ This didn't sound good. Vicki went to the phone. "Did he say why?"

"Nope. Just said he wanted you to see something."

###

Vicki trod the blue-ly lit halls of the morgue for the umpteenth time, a reluctant Henry at her side. The morgue was lightly staffed at night, so they had the corridors largely to themselves. She had to fight off the regret that always threatened when she found herself in any of her old stomping grounds.

"What are we doing here, again?" Henry asked.

"Mike was in the field all day, so I don't know. I told you that."

"If this is going to get us involved in some new case," Henry said, "it will take us away from working on destroying the items."

"Look, you find omens in book titles, I find them when Mike calls _me_ about a case of _his._ It's downright _omen_ ous."

"Who was it who said punning was the basest form of humor?"

"You're grouchy tonight," Vicki said. "Didn't you eat?"

"Last night. I am not grouchy."

Before she could retort, they reached the double-doors that led into the morgue's interior.

Mike stood there, tall and tired-looking, his khaki trenchcoat open and hanging on him like a cloak of office. He looked up at them from the body he'd been studying, his expression neutral. The night technician stood at the body's head, clipboard in hand.

"Hey Mike," Vicki said.

"Vicki. Fitzroy." Mike turned to the tech and took the clipboard from his hand. "Okay, thanks," he said to the young man, clearly a dismissal. The kid looked uncertain, but, under the authoritarian gaze of Detective-Sergeant Mike Celucci, he gave in and moved away.

The body was of a young woman, Vicki saw as they approached. "Where's Mohadevan?" she asked.

"On leave," Mike said. "And Carstairs won't work nights." His gaze moved to Henry.

"I get it," Vicki said. "You've got a body you want Henry to see. Please tell me she's not drained of blood." Vicki glanced at Henry and then stared at him.

Henry's own gaze was fixed on the woman's face, his expression one of horrified surprise. Recognition. "Janice," he said.

"You know her?" Vicki asked. Mike looked unsurprised and brought up the clipboard, taking its pen in hand.

"What's her name?" Mike asked coolly.

Henry glanced at Mike before answering. "Janice. I don't know her last name. What happened to her?" Vicki heard Henry's struggle to ask the question.

Mike wrote. "Hard to say. How do you know her?"

"She's a — date."

Mike put his hand on the woman's chin and gently turned her head to the side. "Two puncture wounds. Officially listed as four days healed. Your handiwork?"

Henry dragged his gaze from the corpse to regard Mike. He didn't answer.

"When was the last time you 'dated' her?" Mike's jaw was tightening. Vicki felt her hackles rising.

Staring again at the woman's face, Henry answered in a distracted tone. "Last night. When—where did you find her?"

"Alley behind a nightclub. Can you guess which one?"

Henry studied Mike for a long moment with a less than friendly consideration. Vicki found she was holding her breath. "The 360," Henry said.

"That's right." Mike wrote again.

Henry stepped to stand beside the woman's head. He reached out with the back of a hand and ran one finger along the young woman's cheek.

"I didn't kill her, Detective," Henry said softly.

"I didn't say you did." Mike sighed. "Truth is, we don't know it's a homicide."

"So what did you want Henry for?" Vicki demanded. She had just watched Mike question Henry like he would a suspect. She had just watched Henry take the blow of learning of the death of someone he'd been intimate with. All sorts of protective instincts leaped to the fore. "Her blood—"

"It's all there. Maybe a touch low; Carstairs said it's hard to tell."

"So, what the hell?"

"Vicki, she had no ID. I'm the only person on the entire force who knew those marks meant Henry. Now we know a name." To Henry he asked, "What time did you last see her?"

Henry continued his light caress, ignoring their dispute. "Around 9:00. I left her at the club. What killed her?"

"Technically, oxygen starvation due to ineffective supply by the blood. We won't know why until the lab results are back. What do you mean you left her? I thought she was your date."

Henry let his hand fall and gave Mike an irritated look. "Would you prefer some other euphemism? She was there with her date, but she danced with me."

"And you drank her blood."

Henry gestured. "As you see."

"The report says those are four days old."

"They heal fast." Henry barked this last and turned to Vicki. "We're done, now," he said, and headed for the doors. Vicki let him go and looked back at Mike.

"Aww," Mike said, "poor thing."

"Mike," she said, putting all her remonstrance into the word.

"You're not a little jealous?" he asked.

"Shut up," she said, unable to think of anything better. She followed Henry out the doors.

"Hey," Mike called after her, "we'd still like to know who her date was."

Vicki waved a hand at him, resisting the temptation to make the wave more rude, and stepped into the hall. Henry waited for her there, to her relief.

"Henry, I'm sorry," she said.

" _You're_ sorry? What for?"

"I'm sorry you lost—someone you cared about."

"Oh." Henry looked surprised, then looked down, but not before Vicki spotted the pain flash in his eyes. "I—" He sighed and lifted his head. "They don't know what she died of. Should I talk to Celucci?"

Henry rarely asked her what he should do. Never, actually, that she could recall. "If she's not ruled a homicide, it's not Mike's case. You could talk to someone else. But it would help them to hear what you know."

Henry nodded, and, donning a determined expression, headed back into the lab. Vicki followed. Inside, Mike stood with his notes as if he expected them to come back.

"I don't know him, but she called him Bud," Henry said, stopping some distance from Mike. "She's a cosmetology student at a school here in Toronto, and she has a sister at the school, too. She's from somewhere north of here that you can reach in less than two hours. She visits her parents once a month. She has a beautiful singing voice. That's all I know."

Mike took this all in calmly, taking notes. "What's her sister's name?"

"I don't know."

"Where does she live?"

"I don't know. Charlotte."

"What?"

"Her sister."

"Right. Tell me about the boyfriend."

Henry shook his head, but it was a thoughtful shake. "Bud, she called him. I've never met him."

"Description?"

Henry reached into his coat and brought out a sketch pad. He produced a pencil and began to sketch energetically. Vicki and Mike both stood waiting. The technician drifted back into their vicinity, curious. Henry tore out the page with a flourish and whipped it at Mike.

"Could you identify him in a line up?" Mike asked.

"If I could smell him."

That cracked Mike's composure. "Smell him?" he said. The technician did a double-take.

"His scent was on her."

"Right." Mike looked down at the drawing. He handed the clipboard back to the tech and waved the drawing at Henry in a slight salute. "We'll be in touch if we need you."

"So I'm free to go?" Henry asked sarcastically.

"Just one more thing. For both of you. Quit burning down my crime scenes."

Vicki looked at her wrist as if she wore a watch. "My, look at the time. C'mon, Henry, we need to go." Henry didn't disagree and they retreated in lock-step.  


* * *

  
At Vicki's office, they found Coreen bent over a library book, with blown-up printouts of the photos of the chalice lying next to it. She looked up as they came in. "What did Mike want?" she asked.

Vicki glanced at Henry. In the car he'd been, while not silent, not communicative, either. Vicki had left him alone with his thoughts. She wasn't sure how close he was to the girls — at least she'd seen only girls — he fed on. He'd made a big deal about how Vicki was "part of him now," because she'd let him feed from her, and he'd been both protecting and pursuing her ever since. He wasn't spending that much time and effort on anyone else, though, she was pretty sure. So how did he feel about this girl?

Henry ignored Coreen's question, so Vicki stepped up. "He wanted to know if Henry had murdered someone," she said, trying to sound light, but not too light. "Have you found anything?"

Coreen looked from Vicki to Henry. "Murdered someone?" she asked, giving Henry one of her desperate-for-attention looks. Henry, however, after laying his greatcoat neatly over the back of a chair, was finding the view out Vicki's office window fascinating. Coreen was forced to address his back.

"Well, you know Mike," Vicki said. "What are you working on? The chalice?"

With a last disappointed glance at Henry's back, Coreen brought her attention back to her work. "I'm trying to identify the engravings. They're all scenes of violence, usually something strangling something else." Curious, Vicki tipped her head to look at the photo printouts.

"I can't always tell what the figures are, though, so I was thinking about what you said about the chalice standing for the spiritual." Some of Coreen's animation returned as she warmed to her subject. "I'm looking for symbols of the spirit. The first one I thought of was a dove standing for the Holy Spirit. See this one? It could be a dove."

Vicki pushed her glasses higher on the bridge of her nose, not that that helped. The creature being choked in the photograph could have been a dove, but it also could have been almost any small bird. "What's this choking it?" she asked, running a fingertip over the picture. She thought she knew the answer.

Coreen nodded. "Half man, half goat, I think. See the horns? Pretty standard Christian symbol for the Devil."

At the window, Henry half turned to listen.

"But if the others are Christian, I can't figure out of what. This one could be Egyptian. Its head kind of looks like a jackal, the god of the underworld, but that's not how they usually draw him."

Henry left the window and drifted closer. Coreen gave him a bright smile and turned the photo toward him.

"What do you mean?" Vicki asked.

"He usually looks all dignified, with his ears up and a long snout. Here he's chomping on something. And he's not exactly an evil figure to the Egyptians, anyway. Not like the Devil. And the ba, or human spirit, was usually drawn as a bird, too, and that's no bird. Maybe I'm wrong and it's not him." Coreen looked hopefully at Henry.

Henry tipped his head, frowning as he studied the blow-up. "That's Anubis all right," he said. "Also god of funeral rites, mummification, and judging the dead." He reached into his greatcoat pocket and withdrew a small leather purse with a snap on the lip. He opened it and took out the dagger. "You said you knew a lab that could test the metal?"

Coreen nodded. "At the university." She held out her hand and Henry placed the dagger in it. "But what about the chalice? Shouldn't we check its metal, too?"

"I don't want them together," he said. "And I haven't decided if I want the chalice out of my control."

"But you don't mind the dagger?" Vicki asked, trying not to rankle at his assumption that this was his decision alone to make.

"It's been blessed. We know the blessing was effective; we saw the results."

Vicki nodded. "In that case, we should get the chalice blessed, too."

Henry gave her a surprised look. "All right." He pulled a pocket watch out of his suit vest and looked at it. "It may not be too late to have it done tonight."

"I'll go with you."

"No, you stay and help Coreen with the engravings."

"Henry, you're not going out alone with a ritual item."

"You'd rather leave Coreen alone with one? I want to talk to my priest myself; I may have to—" He looked uncomfortable.

"' _Persuade_ ' him?" Vicki guessed.

"Lie," Henry said with an annoyed expression. "I don't like lying to a priest; it can't be good. But let me handle this."

Vicki yielded, reluctantly. "Coreen, anything else he should know about the chalice?"

Coreen shook her head, running a black-polished fingertip over a photo. "I haven't gotten very far. We have the Devil choking the Holy Spirit, and Anubis devouring—whatever this is."

Henry joined Vicki in studying the picture more closely. Henry mused, "It looks like a — a pretzel."

"Ah, the pretzel," Vicki said sagely. "Ancient Egyptian symbol of Oktoberfest."

Henry gave her a long-suffering look.

"Do you suppose it had salt on it?" she went on. "How about mustard? I like mine with mustard."

"Have you ever tried horseradish?" Coreen asked. "It's really good. And soy sauce, too."

Henry looked from one woman to the other. "Did someone miss dinner?" he asked.

"Yes," Vicki and Coreen chorused.

Henry donned his coat. "Then I shall leave you two to your meals of dead flesh or twisted wheat product."

###

Vicki was almost ready for bed when the phone rang. She reached for it with relief, because Henry had not checked in after leaving to get the chalice blessed. She had tried not to worry, since he often didn't call if he finished something too late at night.

"Vicki, you're all right." Henry's voice held both relief and concern.

"I'm fine," she said. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Because you—because I—Vicki, someone else is dead."

"What?" She had never heard Henry sound so upset. "Who?"

"Rhonda Brody. A friend. She died in the hospital today." She heard him take a breath. "I fed from her last night."

"I thought you fed on Janice."

" _And_ Rhonda. They were both fine last night. Now they're dead. Right after the grimoire. I'm the one who destroyed the grimoire, and now everyone I touch dies."

"Wait, wait. Calm down." Vicki found it unnerving to hear Henry sound off-balance. "It's not anyone you touch. You've been with Coreen and me and we're fine. Mike, too. And what about the priest? Did you get the chalice blessed?"

"Yes. It's blessed," Henry said, sounding more like himself. "Vicki, this is very serious. We did something wrong, and this is the consequence."

"Are you at home? I'm coming over."

"No! You have to stay away!"

"Henry, think. Do you honestly think I'm going to die because I walk into your apartment? Be reasonable. Think this through."

Henry said nothing.

Vicki rubbed her eyes. "Think of all the people you've been with tonight and last night. Did you talk to your doorman?"

"Yes."

"Anyone else in the building?"

"Yes."

"When you were at the club, you must have talked to other people. Did you dance with anyone else?"

"Yes, but Vicki—"

"Did you dance with them, or feed on them?"

"I only—just Janice and Rhonda."

"You fed on two women last night? Is that usual for you?"

"It's called clubbing. You should try it sometime." Now Henry sounded exactly like he did when Mike interrogated him. Normal. Vicki relaxed.

"Done that, thanks. I'm going blind, I don't need to go deaf as well. I'm coming over. We have to talk. Just don't bite me and we'll be fine."

###

Henry opened his door to her promptly. At this time of night Vicki generally found him at his work, wearing loose-fitting, vaguely sensual clothes. Tonight, he still wore the suit he'd had on earlier, including the vest. It made him look confined. He didn't smile as she entered.

"Anyone else dead?" she asked, in all seriousness. As a cop she'd learned to use dark humor as a shield, but she wouldn't dream of joking with Henry about this.

"Not if you aren't." He took her right hand in his, palm up, and stroked the almost-healed gash with his thumb. "I fed from you, too."

"That was the night before," she said, and pressed her tongue against the inside of her healed lip at the memory of their kiss.

"And before we destroyed the grimoire. Thank God." He dropped her hand and turned away from her, pacing farther into his condo. He invited her to sit with a short gesture of one hand.

Vicki took a seat, allowing herself to watch him move. Henry had a dancer's grace she seldom had the opportunity to enjoy. When they'd had cause for swift action, it was usually too dark for her to see him, and she'd tended to be occupied, herself. Often he'd moved too fast for anyone to see him, so she'd mostly noticed his grace those few times she'd seen him pacing with thought or worry. Like now.

"I knew something like this would happen," he said. "We don't know what we're doing and we're tossing black magic around like it's a hockey puck. I threw that grimoire on the fire like it was just another log. As if I knew— And now two young women are dead."

"I was the one who thought we should burn the grimoire. You did it to shield me from any consequences. And we weren't casual about it. You prayed for it to work. This isn't your fault. You couldn't have known."

"How does ignorance excuse it? They're dead, Vicki. Their lives are over because of our overconfidence. My overconfidence," he amended.

"Oh, don't go all noble on me. I'm in this, too. Shoot, I'm at the center of it. And I'm sorry they're dead. I really am. I hate it when—" She had to stop herself as a cascade of memories tumbled through her consciousness, the most recent being Brendan Ledford, the victim of the Gorgon she'd been trying to save, who'd been murdered while under her protection and because of her investigation.

Henry's steel-hard gaze on her softened minutely.

"But we can't let it stop us," she said. "I'm not even completely convinced their deaths are related."

Henry snorted as he turned away from her to resume his pacing.

"How did you learn Rhonda was dead?"

"From her friends at the club. She felt sick in the morning when she woke up. She collapsed and was taken to the hospital. She died in the afternoon."

"Of what?"

"They didn't know."

"Did the hospital know?"

"I don't know. What does it matter?"

"Of course it matters. Was it something contagious? Did Janice have it and you spread it to Rhonda? We'll talk to the hospital and find out. At least you know Rhonda's last name. What were you doing tonight at a nightclub? Are there any new girls we should be worried about?"

Henry whirled toward her. "Vicki, this is not the time to deal with your ridiculous jealousy. This is life and death."

"My what?" What? Where was this coming from? Vicki stood up.

"Jealousy. You refuse my attentions but you're jealous whenever you see me with someone else. You can't even refer to my dates without sarcasm, and God forbid I should have someone in my bed. You behave like I'm an adulterous libertine. This is not just carnal pleasure; it's how I live. I don't need you passing judgment on it."

Vicki got in his face. "What are you talking about? I don't care what you do. I know it's how you live, but maybe right now it would be healthier for everyone if you found an alternative lifestyle."

Henry turned away. Vicki felt stunned. Neither of them spoke.

Vicki breathed once, twice. She put a hand on his arm. "Henry, you're—afraid to feed."

Henry turned slowly back to her, his expression tight. "Whose life should I gamble with next?" he asked.

Now that she'd realized the problem, Vicki's brain buzzed. "You've got other—there are other ways. Right?" Her hand fell from his arm.

The look Henry gave her had hopelessness in it, and buried terror. Vicki saw her answer there, but had to ask anyway. "Like bagged blood?"

"I drink life," Henry said in a controlled tone. "Blood is just the vessel. Without life, the blood is empty."

"There must be something else—the dump! You said there's all kinds of life in a dump. You could drink from animals."

Henry closed his eyes. "It's like bread and water. I can't last on it very long."

Vicki licked dry lips, still thinking furiously.

"Mendoza gave me a rat," Henry continued, distracted. "He needed to keep me alive. It would have helped, but I let it go."

"Why?" Vicki asked, not sure where these musings were going. The starved, desperate Henry she remembered from that time could have used any help he could get.

"I wanted to persuade him I was a man, not a monster. That I could show mercy." Henry smiled slightly. "To a rat."

"You were his prisoner," Vicki said. "Appealing to his humanity was your only hope."

"No, Vicki. You were my only hope. Mendoza had lost his humanity."

Vicki clenched her fists to keep from touching him. "Well you haven't. We'll solve this, I promise. We'll fix it."


End file.
